Lindeman's Shiraz & Lusaran the Mask

Lendeman's Shiraz & Lusaran the Mask

The Wine

When you first smell the wine it smells like it you'd expect it to. The smell is of a very sweet grape, unfortunately, that's where the pleasantries end. The first taste of wine from this bottle will cause a sudden wincing as your body tries to question if what you're putting into it is causing physical pain, or if you just made a terrible mistake in consuming something that might not actually be edible. Now this wine won't kill you, it's not that merciful. Its existence is to create nothing but the most unhindered torture it is capable of. It's not often that you receive a wine that makes you question everything about yourself, what in your past has caused you to get to this point, or even how a person of your educational level could be dumb enough to buy this crap.

Now I do joke around about it, but I have to say that this wine isn't the worst that I've had, after letting it sit for a few months resealed it did get a bit better. It's still cringe worthy, but there's only so much I can do without making any real effort. A wine should survive a review on its own account without needing alteration or further aging. As it is Lindeman's Bin 50 Shiraz is simply not up to the par in density or full body taste that it would make it worthy a positive review. While it does show a bit of potential to become better than it is, potential alone doesn't call for a good review.

Lusaran the Mask

If you've ever played a table role-playing game then you likely have a Lusaran of your own. That one completely awesome character with just the right skills and feats able to contend with anything thrown at it. Lusaran the Mask, in this way, is my greatest accomplishment to date for my Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 system. A rogue that took the weakest weapon in the game and through carefully placed feats and skills has turned those weapons into one of the most devastating attacks that I have been able to create. Lusaran is an example of what any character can become with proper care and understanding, just a slight thinking outside the box by the player and the will to have a good time during the game.

Lusaran's personality comes down to your average prankster, his method for dealing with difficult situations is to make jokes about them. For instance, he acquired a Ethernaut ship and because it was "bigger on the inside" immediately started referring to it as "The Tardis". After it being fixed enough to work, though, he started calling it "The DeLorean", but that is a story for another time. The points of Lusaran's jokes arrives from one of two possibilities, the first is that he's actually a super genius that makes really bad jokes, or just simply insane. The truth behind Lusaran's mental state might be something that is never truly discovered, but it does make for a very entertaining character.

So what makes Lusaran the completely devastating DPS that he is? Well it comes down to his weapon of choice. Lusaran uses throwing knives, not confused with the core rulebook's dagger, or shrunken. The throwing knife does 1D2 damage, and I know that doesn't seem like much, but what you have to realize here is that you can throw a number of knives per attack equal to your dexterity modifier up to 5. That means that instead of doing 1 or 2 points of damage, you're actually doing 5 to 10 points of damage. Now, what you have to realize is that once you've thrown your knives you need to draw more, that's an action all on its own, but not if you take the feat "Quick Draw" which allows you to draw weapons as a free action. Now you're attacking every action instead of every other, which will come in handy later. Now start building up "Weapon Focus" and "Weapon Specialization" because WF improves your ability to hit and WS improves damage by 2 points every hit and "Greater Weapons Specialization" adds two more on top of that. So you're adding 4 per knife thrown meaning that you're adding 20 to make your damage 25 to 30 per action. Add in "Weapon Finesse" to increase each knife by 5 damage because it adds your Dex modifier directly to damage. This means that you're now doing 50 to 55 damage. Throw in "Point Blank Shot", because it is a ranged weapon even if the range isn't that much, and that's another 2 damage per knife making your damage 60 to 65. How do you improve this further? How does the "Two Weapon Fighting" tree sound? It doesn't add to damage but allows you to make two attacks per action meaning that you're now doing 120 to 130 damage to anything you hit, finish it all up with "Rapid Shot" and you just added one more attack to that formula and by now you have 3 attacks actions per round and with that one extra attack you get 7 attacks every round. That makes a grand total of 420 to 455 damage, enough to take out most of anything you can find in the monster manual.

That is the secret to Lusaran the Mask's success in dealing massive amounts of damage to anything that gets in front of him. If any of you wish to copy this make sure to keep in mind that your GM is going to make up stuff to screw you over with it and if you roll a 1, just don't roll a 1. Keep in mind that the most important part of role-playing is to have fun, and if making a character like this doesn't seem fun, or can take the fun from someone else, then it might be better to leave that type of character out of the game. If you do decide to go with this layout for a character then I wish you the best of luck. Happy hunting, Adventurers.